


It's Not Perfect (It's Better)

by editingatwork



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mostly Fluff, OC Las Vegas Aces, Thanksgiving story, angst then fluff, good teammates Aces, prompt, the Aces love Kent and will take care of him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 08:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8660443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/editingatwork/pseuds/editingatwork
Summary: tumblr prompt: "What about patater where Tater and Swoops/Aces organise a big party for Kent? Or just like thanksgiving ? Some kind of event where he's always been alone and finally has a supportive network and family who wanna surprise and love him."Kent's Thanksgiving sucks. The Aces come to the rescue.





	

Kent comes back from picking Kit up from the vet and finds his apartment filled with his teammates. When he wrestles open his front door and sees them all over his living room and kitchen, he freezes, the cat carrier in one hand and a bag of Chinese takeout in the other.

All heads turn towards him.

Kent stands there slack-jawed for several seconds and then exclaims, “The _fuck_?”

“Sup, Captain!” calls Finch. He leans out of the kitchen, wearing a blue apron with a picture of a turkey on it and the words “I’m all about that baste” written beneath it. Christ, where the fuck did he even find that? Finch waves and says, “Did you know you were completely out of food?”

Kent holds up his bag of Chinese takeout. “What the hell are you all doing here?”

Swoops comes up and takes the bag from him. “Having Thanksgiving with you.”

“That was _two days ago_ ,” Kent says, following him into the apartment. Now that both his arms are free, he cradles the cat carrier against his chest. Kit’s weight sags to one side and makes the balance uneven, but Kent holds it steady. His baby girl is still doped up from the drugs they gave her to keep her calm after surgery, and he’s got two different kinds of antibiotics in his pocket that he has to somehow get her to swallow twice a day for the next week while the stitches heal.

 Meanwhile, Swoops has taken Kent’s takeout to the kitchen and is unloading its contents into the refrigerator. “Yep,” Swoops agrees. Besides Finch, Sunny and Jeff are also making use of Kent’s kitchen. It’s a tight squeeze, them being abnormally huge and Kent’s kitchen being, well, modest. (“I don’t cook much,” he’d told his real estate agent. “Just a burner and space for a fridge and I’m good.”) Somehow, though, they’ve managed to whip up a bowl of mashed potatoes, a pumpkin pie, and some stuffing. Now that Kent’s paying attention, he can smell something sweet baking in the oven.

In the living room, Kent finds Rose, Pavlo, and Dezzy making themselves comfortable on Kent’s extensive collection of sofas and armchairs. He’s even more baffled, because three of the guys here are married with kids. What the hell are they doing here on a holiday weekend?

And more importantly… “How the fuck did you get in my apartment?” Kent asks. He’s still got his coat on and Kit’s carrier in his arms. The sounds and the smells are rousing her, and she meows plaintively inside the carrier. Kent leans close to the air holes and whispers something soothing. He doesn’t expect anyone to chirp him for it, and nobody does.

Pavlo, meanwhile, is looking guilty. “I’m, uh. I’m…open door. With pin.”

Kent turns his glare on the others. “You made the rookie pick my lock?”

From the kitchen, Sunny calls, “He volunteered.”

“Swoops say he’s forget key!” Pavlo yelps. “Say you give him! Say is okay!”

“Pavlo, I never have, nor will I ever give Nathan Turner free access to my living space,” Kent says. Kit meows again. The exhaustion in her little cat voice makes Kent’s heart clench. His poor girl. “I’m gonna get Kit settled,” he says, and takes the carrier into his room. He shuts the door behind him, places Kit’s carrier on the bed, and raids the linen closet for a stack of his biggest, softest towels. He makes a nest for her on the bathroom floor.

Kit cries when he lifts her out of the carrier.

“Shh, baby, I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it hurts. You’re strong, baby girl. Just a few steps, I promise.” He gets her into the bathroom and carefully arranges her on the towel nest. He finds a ceramic bowl and fills it shallowly with water, pushing it close to her. She’s so tired from the drugs and the stress of the surgery yesterday that she barely has the strength to lift her head and take a short drink. She just keeps making soft little sounds of distress.

“I’m so sorry, baby.” He keeps repeating it over and over. Because he is sorry. She’s gone through all this for nothing. Two days before Thanksgiving, she’d stopped eating, and the next day she’d started throwing things up. Kent had rushed her to the vet and been told, after a few scans, that there was something blocking Kit’s intestines but they couldn’t tell _what._ It could be dangerous blockage; it could be gas. Giving her meds to break it up could be dangerous if it was an infection. They’d advised Ken that the safest way to clear it up would be surgery.

As it turned out, Kit had been absolutely fine. Meds would have solved anything; she could have been out of the vet’s in hours. Instead, Kent had had to wait another 24 hours after the surgery to take her home, and now Kit was on bed rest for the next week while her stitches healed.

He believed what the vet had told him, which was that it was better to be safe than sorry, but still. He hated how sad his girl looked and sounded now.

Kent’s Thanksgiving had been spent sitting alone in his apartment watching the Harry Potter movie marathon and eating Indian takeout. He’d had to cancel his flight to New York, where his mother and sister and everyone else remotely related to them had all had Thanksgiving together. Kent had Skyped them. They’d all watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade together. But afterwards, Kent had been left alone in his Las Vegas apartment, with not even his cat to cheer him up.

He hadn’t called or texted Tater about it. Tater had texted him from Russia:

**Happy Thanksgiving!! Please enjoy day and eat until fat. I love you.**

Kent had replied with _love u too, babe_ and gone back to his marathon. It had been a pathetic Thanksgiving and he’d felt pathetically lonely during it.

Now he has an apartment full of teammates who are apparently making him a Thanksgiving dinner from scratch.

He slumps down against the bathroom sink, wraps his arms around his knees, and buries his face in them. Even though these guys are like his second family, he doesn’t want to go back out and deal with them. He wants to stay in the bathroom with Kit, eating his Chinese takeout from the box and listening to podcasts on his phone. He’s been stressed for four days straight, and he’s tired.

Someone knocks on his bedroom door. “Parser?” Sunny calls through it. “We’re about done. You wanna come eat?”

 _No,_ Kent thinks. He strokes Kit a few times. She’s gone to sleep. She’ll probably out most of the night.

Meanwhile, Kent’s stomach growls. He barely ate all day. No matter how badly he wants to stay in here, he needs sustenance. He’s no good to his cat if he passes out from hunger.

Kent sighs, gets up, and leaves the bathroom, closing the door behind him. When he opens his bedroom door, all he can really see of Sunny is blue eyes and beard, but the enormous d-man’s voice is gentle when he asks, “You good?”

Kent sighs again. “Yeah.” They go out into the living room.

“How’s Kit?” Rose asks. “Did they find out what the problem was?”

Pavlo and Dezzy scoot over on the couch to make room for Kent. He slumps into the spot and rubs his hand over his face. “Yeah, they did. It was nothing. We could have just given her the meds, cleared out her system, no problem.”

Rose makes a noise of sympathy. “That sucks. At least you know she’ll be okay, though.”

“Yeah.” He’s saying that a lot. He looks up at the assembled Aces. “Seriously, you guys. What are you all doing here? I know you’re not here to check up on my cat.”

A smack on the back of his head takes him by surprise. He yelps and twists to see Swoops looking down at him like a disappointed parent. “No, we’re here to check up on you. Idiot.”

“So send a text,” Kent says. “Or an email. Don’t break into my damn apartment.”

Swoops snorts. “And miss the chance to see your face?”

Dezzy asks, “You didn’t really think we’d leave you by yourself after you said you’d had to cancel your flight home?” Dezzy is older than all of them and is going to retire after this season. He’s got two grown kids, a house, a wife, and a dog, and several Stanleys. Dezzy’s like a dad to everyone on the team. Kent’s going to miss him.

The look he’s giving Kent now is so kind and fatherly that Kent has to bite his tongue to keep the burning behind his eyes from leaking out as tears. His throat tight, he replies, “Guess not. Just, you didn’t have to go through all this trouble. I bought takeout.”

Rose fakes a gasp. “Parse, are you saying you don’t want to eat Finch’s pie?”

Finch pokes his head out of the kitchen. “Parse isn’t going to eat my pie? But I worked so hard on it. I texted Trisha, like, five thousand times about the crust. What do you mean, Parse isn’t going to eat my pie?”

Sunny is standing next to Dezzy’s armchair. He raises an eyebrow at Kent.

Kent throws up his hands. “Fine!”

Ten minutes later, Jeff and Rose have raided Kent’s cupboards for all the plates, forks, spoons, and knives that Kent owns, which turns out to be not enough. Swoops breaks out a pack of paper plates and disposable silverware. “I know your daily diet of fried takeout, Parse,” he says, handing Kent a paper plate.

The full menu turns out to be mashed potatoes, biscuits, pineapple bread pudding, stuffing, a green bean casserole, sweet potato gnocchi, a pumpkin pie, and a turkey, which apparently was not cooked on the premise but in Dezzy’s own kitchen. The gnocchi is Rose’s contribution, the potatoes from Sunny, the stuffing brought by Swoops, and the casserole’s ingredients contributed by Jeff. Finch made the bread pudding and the pie. He watches Kent taking the first bites of each.

“It’s good,” Kent says, and Finch lights up.

They all cram themselves into Kent’s living room, which is big enough for one person, maybe three, but eight hockey players is pushing it. They have to shove the furniture outwards to make enough room on the floor for the guys who don’t get a spot on the sofa or an armchair.

It’s cramped and claustrophobic. The guys talk but Kent doesn’t say much; he just eats. They seem fine with that. Kent goes back for seconds. Rose brought wine—three bottles of it—and Kent drinks until he’s warm and flushed.  He gets drawn into a conversation about the Macy’s Parade, and suddenly an hour passes and Kent finds that the awful miasma of loneliness that had been clinging to him since Kit went to the vet’s is beginning to fade away. It’s not just the wine making him feel warm. It’s these voices around him, the familiar smell of Rose’s fancy-ass cologne, the taste of homemade pumpkin pie, Pavlo’s body weight dipping the sofa cushions next to Kent and Swoops sitting on the floor nearby, his shoulder brushing Kent’s knee every time he reaches for his glass of wine on the coffee table.

It’s two days late and it’s lacking the creamed corn cornbread his mom always makes, as well as the obligatory canned cranberry sauce, but it’s good. It’s so good. Kent’s glad that when he was sitting in the bathroom next to Kit, he didn’t just tell Sunny to fuck off when the guy knocked on Kent’s door.

Kent had thought he didn’t want to be around people, but really he’s been desperate for it since last Wednesday. He thrives on having people around. Being so alone had been taxing.

Worst of all has been the cold spot in his bed. Russia doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but the few days off had given Tater the time to fly back and visit his mother, who was old and lived alone and only had Tater’s cousins and uncle to check up on her.

“September twenty-seventh is Russian mother’s day,” Tater had told Kent over Skype. “I miss for two years now, just send flowers. Want to surprise her with visit. Is okay, _solnyshko?_ ”

“Yes. Of course it’s okay.”

Tater had smiled and said, “Thank you. I know is Thanksgiving weekend. I know you come out East, and I miss chance to see you.”

Kent had shrugged. “Family is important. Tell your mom ‘hi’ for me.”

A brighter smile. “You good man, Kent.”

Kent had assumed he’d be in New York celebrating Thanksgiving with his family. Having that all go pear-shaped and leaving him alone in his apartment with not even his cat for company had been the worst turn of events.

He’d broken out the tequila on the night of Kit’s surgery and substituted coffee for sleep the morning after, in all honesty.

Back in the real world, Rose reaches past Pavlo to smack Kent for comparing gnocchi to boiled caterpillars. Kent laughs for real for the first time in days.

The doorbell rings.

“Got it,” Sunny says, putting his plate aside and getting up.

Rose asks, “You expecting someone?”

Kent shrugs, sips wine. “Nope. Maybe it’s the rest of the team.”

“It better not be,” Jeff says. “Nobody else is gonna fit in here, and the food’s almost gone.”

“Wine’s a food,” Kent says, and then nearly dumps his drink on himself when he hears someone come into the room behind him and ask, “Is all food gone? Flight was long and I’m hungry.”

Kent turns around and Tater is standing there, jacket unzipped and a giant duffel over his shoulder. Tater grins. Kent manages, “How…?”

Tater drops the duffel and comes to the sofa, leaning over the back to kiss Kent’s forehead. “I get early flight. Is Kit okay?”

“Yeah, she’s fine,” Kent says vacantly. He’s drunk on wine and thinks maybe he’s hallucinating, but Tater’s lips against his skin _felt_ real. “Brought her home today, found these assholes in my kitchen.”

“We feed you and this is the thanks we get,” Rose complains good-naturedly. “Finch, don’t give him anymore pie.”

Kent’s still focused on Tater. He grabs the man’s jacket sleeve, and yes, that’s real. It’s warm with heat from Tater’s skin. Kent can _smell_ him, musky and rank from the long flight. “Why are you _here_?” he asks.

“Why you not tell me Kit is sick? That you not go to New York?” Tater’s voice is firm but not accusing. More hurt than anything. Kent feels like shit. He looks away.

“Didn’t want you to worry,” he mumbles.

“Hm.” Tater pats his shoulder. “Is good you have team who care about you.”

“I—” Kent looks at the other men in the room. “God, seriously? Who fucking tattled?”

At Kent’s knee, Swoops raises his wine glass and says, “Whoops.”

“Goddamn it, Swoops.”

Tater puts his hand on Kent’s nape and gives him a squeeze. It’s a possessive gesture that never fails to give Kent delighted little shivers. Tater has also found that Kent keeps all his stress in his neck and shoulders, and often touches him there to remind him to relax. “Not be angry,” Tater says. “Now, is still food? Or greedy Aces eat everything?”

“Fuck you, Falconer,” Swoops says. “Plates are on the counter, along with the food. Help yourself.”

Tater comes back with a plate piled high. Before he can open his mouth to ask where he should sit, Pavlo leaps out of his seat next to Kent and squawks something in Russian. Tater thanks him and takes the offered spot, his weight dipping the cushions even more than Pavlo had. It pulls Kent into Tater’s orbit like a black hole pulls in stars and stray matter. With his wine in one hand, he leans against Tater’s shoulder.

Conversation around them resumes, like there’s nothing unusual about this at all. Time was that Kent wouldn’t dare look at another man too long if his team was around. Now, Tater shifts, his arm sliding around Kent and pulling him closer. Kent lets his head fall onto Tater’s shoulder. Nobody bats an eye. Although Swoops does pat Kent’s knee when he gets up to put his plate in the sink.

After a while, Kent tilts his head up so he’s speaking into Tater’s ear. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says quietly. Tater turns to look at him. Kent continues, “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, or hide things from you. I just—I knew you’d do this. I knew you’d cut your trip short and I didn’t want you to do that.”

Tater nods. “I know. You never mean to hurt. Just do, sometimes.”

“I’m sorry,” Kent manages.

Tater rubs his shoulder. “Not scolding you, _solnyshko_. Just saying I understand.”

“I really would have been okay,” Kent says. “I mean, it sucked, but it’s not new. I’ve been alone on holidays before.”

“I know.” Tater kisses his forehead again. “But you not need be alone again. You have family. And if you don’t have family, you have team. You have me. Is okay, to make us worry. We take care of you.”

Kent nods and buries his face in Tater’s shirt, because he’s drunk enough that if he keeps looking the other man in the eye, he’s gonna do something embarrassing, like get weepy.

Tater hugs him. “Happy Thanksgiving, Kent.”

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna finish these prompts if it's the last thing I do, I'm so grateful to everyone who submitted them.  
> Sorry this one is like two days late.
> 
> Join me in patater hell on [tumblr](http://punmasterkentparson.tumblr.com/).


End file.
